James Patterson - Don’t Blink

If looks could kill, this story would end right here. Fortunately, they can’t.

“This isn’t about me, Nick.”

“That’s where you’re a hundred percent wrong. It’s always about you, Brenda, and it always will be.”

That touched a nerve, to put it mildly. Her face immediately flushed bright red, her hands balling into fists. Apparently it was time for her to wake the neighbors.

“Fuck you!” she yelled. “Do you hear me? FUCK YOU! You’re such a loser, Nick.”

She then marched out of my apartment, making a beeline for the elevator. She hit the down button so hard, I was sure she broke a nail.

“Does this mean I’m not getting a Christmas card?” I asked from my doorway.

It was a glib comment, but I couldn’t help it. She was bringing out the worst in me, as she always did.

The elevator opened and Brenda stepped inside – but not before having the last word, a proverbial kick to the groin. She really did know how to hurt a guy, especially me.

“By the way,” she said. “My new boyfriend? He’s way better than you in bed!”

Ouch.

I WALKED INTO the cavernous Main Concourse of Grand Central Station the next morning, weaving my way through the buzzing crowd of tourists and visiting weekend suburbanites. I must say that I love this building and can’t thank Jacqueline Onassis enough for saving it once upon a time.

Out of nowhere I bumped shoulders with a young man who had a knapsack strung over one shoulder. As we traded polite, if not clipped, apologies and went our separate ways, I couldn’t help noticing his T-shirt. In big block lettering it read, “SAVE DARFUR.”

Naturally, I couldn’t help thinking of Dr. Alan Cole and wondering how he was doing – and where he might be doing it. Hopefully, he’d soon be back home safely.

Of course, that would make only one of us. With everything that’s happened since I returned home from Darfur, I almost longed for the relative peace and quiet of being chased and shot at by the Janjaweed militia…

Maybe that’s why I was so looking forward to this day and what I would be doing soon.

Pure and simple, there’d be no talk of murder, no mention of the mob, no discussion of the mysterious stranger who’d told me to mind my own business and do nothing.

That would all take a backseat to a pair of box seats at Yankee Stadium. Myself in one, and the center of my current universe in the other. That would be my niece, Elizabeth.

Her passport says she’s fourteen, but you’d never know it. Bright and articulate beyond her years, she also happens to be the bravest kid I know.

No, scratch that. She’s the bravest anybody I know.

Elizabeth ’s train hissed to a stop right on time at platform forty, the long row of doors opening in perfect unison. While the mad dash to exit was nowhere near your typical weekday morning rush hour, there was still enough of a crowd that I couldn’t spot her right away.

That’s when I heard her, the familiar sound that always accompanies her arrival on any scene.

Immediately, I smiled. I could see her now. But she couldn’t see me.

Elizabeth couldn’t see anything.

She’s been blind since the age of five.

“You forgot your mitt again, didn’t you?” I said as she got a little closer.

She smiled an amazing smile before scrunching her freckled nose. “And you’re wearing too much cologne again. I could just about smell you on the train coming in.”

I gave her a hug, squeezing her tightly in my arms. “I think Jeter’s going to hit one today,” I whispered. “I can feel it in my bones.”

“I think he’s going to hit two,” she whispered back. “Let’s go and see.”

Then she did what she always did. She broke away from my grasp so she could walk on her own, her foldout white cane leading the way.

Tap-tap-tap…

That’s my niece, Elizabeth.

The bravest anybody I know.

The perfect antidote for everything that had happened this week.

YOU MIGHT WONDER – WASN’T I afraid I might be putting Elizabeth in harm’s way? I had thought about it and briefly considered canceling our day together, but that would have broken her heart – and the Mafia had always put women and children out of bounds. That was the code.

So it was Elizabeth and me – and we were already drawing some attention, as we always do.

I understood the double takes. I could even put up with the excessive staring. After all, whoever heard of bringing a blind girl to a baseball game?

But they didn’t get it, not any of them. It was as if they were the ones who were blind.

Don’t you see? Anybody?

Baseball is the crack of the bat and the roar of the crowd, the smell of cut grass and hot dogs, the crunch of peanut shells at your feet.

Elizabeth couldn’t see the game with her eyes, but she enjoyed it no less than those who could. Perhaps she even enjoyed it more. Because while others merely watched it, she felt it.

And the gushing smile on her face was all I needed to see to be assured of that.

“So, how is Courtney?” Elizabeth asked after the top of the first. Between innings was when we did most of our talking. My niece had met Courtney half a dozen times and they adored each other.

“Courtney told me to say hello,” I said, which was the truth. “How’s your mom?” I asked then, quickly changing the subject.

“Mom’s lonely, that’s how she is,” answered Elizabeth. “But she’s tough, too.”

As often as I spoke to my older sister, Kate, I never felt as if she completely leveled with me. Elizabeth, on the other hand, always told it like it was.

“Lonely, huh? Like, sad lonely?” I asked.

“Is there any other kind?”

“Good point.”

“She needs to meet someone,” said Elizabeth. “Isn’t Courtney getting married?”

“She is, and to a very impressive guy. Your mom’s been going on a few dates, hasn’t she?”

“Yeah, few and far between.”

I laughed out loud. “It takes time, Lizzy.”

“Okay, but it’s been, like, four years since he died, Nick. That’s enough time.”

Four and a half, to be exact. That’s when my sister’s husband, Carl, had suffered a fatal heart attack while on business in London. He had been only forty-two. How on earth does that happen? Why? On whose orders?

Kate had called me to break the news. She’d also asked that I come out to their home in Weston, Connecticut, so I could help break the news to Elizabeth. She couldn’t bear to do it alone. The girl was nine years old and blind, and suddenly she was also fatherless, and her mom had a huge hole in her heart.

I’ll never forget what Elizabeth asked me that hot August afternoon as I held her hand on their living room couch. She was wearing a yellow sundress, her frazzled blond hair tucked back in rows of barrettes. “Will I be able to see my daddy in heaven?” she wanted to know.

My eyes welled up. I could barely hold back the tears.

“Yes,” I told her. “You’ll see him every day.”

“Do you promise?”

“I do.”

I squeezed her little hand and she squeezed back, and all I could remember thinking was one thing.

If there is indeed a God up there, he better not make a liar out of me.

“So anyway, Uncle Nick,” Elizabeth said after a quick sip of soda, “tell me all about Courtney and this impressive fiancé of hers.”

“Okay, okay – I’m heartbroken,” I finally admitted.

“I knew you were,” she said. “I could tell in your voice, just in the way you say her name. You truly are heartbroken. And I’m heartbroken for you.”